“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence— 2  as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3  When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4  From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. 5  You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? 6  We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7  There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. 8  But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9  Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. 10  Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. 11  Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. 12  Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?” (Isaiah 64 ESV)

Blip, point-blank, the nearness to the liminal is a nearness to rare Faith. We begin somehow to Believe… in a corporate Belonging, in a semblance of Provision, in what is both More than our efforts and decisions, and is auto-pilot for our fears and hangups. We have Faith that God will keep us on the right track. We have Faith that, far from the boredom of a mechanized new Reality, we will be coached and allocated Trust to take our falls and our brandishings and our determined Counterpunches as Decisions made Personally and in Human guise.

Because the wearying hours, these cause our Faith to fall away at times. More, we start to debate as to whether we even Want a clockwork universe, whether we Want God to intervene, hear me out, O pundit of the Spiritual: we are clammed up and hemmed in with the clay from which we were hewn, and after all, it wasn’t God decided this sin or that, it was us. He does not, even now, decide for us, but when we descend, when we’ve arrived, when we’ve been humbled by the bleary-eyed Liminal, the echoes of Silence met with a distant thud, when we’ve come close to nirvana and hocus-pocus Spirit, there it after all makes sense: His blood for my life, His lifeblood for my salvation, His passion for my coached and Risen Up power. He is Power to the unloved, with a strange echo hall of Love for the loveless shown.

More than we could ever imagine. More love than even our guidance counselors and employers show. More love than even a romantic partner, at times: our loved status, wherein we Grew Up into big boys and big girls. And what of this love? More than just a word, it was our Factual Belonging and Etched Diorama, Figurines of His mercy and compassion we all are.

So to the Eternal… aren’t we presumptuous even to talk of such things? Well, how’s about to the Forgiven… aren’t we, not to be a parrot, aren’t we presumptuous even to think so much is needed? We do, however, need an Urgent Intervention, to dampen the storm clouds with our own tears and moistures so salutary and cleansing. We needed Eternity Now, because we were alternately coached, coached by the devil, to Doubt and to settle for something less than what was needful of our time. We do, however need an Urgent Forgiveness, to heal the arid lands and make blip and blemish go away.

God has a plan, and the longer we’ve walked with Him… the longer and more tempting it is to think ourselves “Graduated” to a Christian receptivity and perfection. Indeed, life in fact is turmoil and imperfection, urgent need at times for the foot-washing or for the laying-on-of-hands: we scour sin, scourge sin, empower Righteousness and build up Bespoken Peace. We are not some sanguine middling personage, but are scouring the sins and saying “let’s kill sin”. In order that the Need might naturally arise, for an Encounter with Blessedness, for Mercyseat, for Character Formed.